Punished
by Lost In Rotation
Summary: Every action, every decision, carries the weight of its consequences. But we don't always see the effects until the aftermath is upon us. Karen Page learns the hardest way of all. One-shot with spoilers through the end of season two.
She had said she was finished with him. If he pulled the trigger, if he ended the Colonel's life, that was it. She was finished with him. And she had meant it. Every heartfelt word she'd sworn as she fought back tears.

On the way back to her destroyed car, she'd heard the gunshot. She'd felt destroyed herself. The tears had come, and she had been powerless to fight them back. She had thought, she had hoped, that he would let this one go. That it would mean something to him that she had believed him to be better. It hadn't. It hadn't meant anything.

She thought that moment had broken her, and then she'd met Matt in the old law offices. He'd pulled out the mask of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, and he'd told her the truth. Again, her world crumbled around her. Everything she'd thought she knew, everything she was likely to believe. She'd been wrong, so utterly wrong, and she'd felt the fool.

She'd gone back to her tiny apartment and curled up in a ball. She listened to the news, saw the blurb about a house that had gone up in flames and taken the firefighters all day to extinguish. She recognized the house even before she read the tagline at the bottom of the screen.

Shutting off the television, Karen pulled herself off the couch. She made it as far as the kitchen, to the cabinet that held what few bottles of cheap liquor she could afford to buy. Pulling a dirty glass out of the sink, she uncapped the bottle with shaking hands and filled the glass halfway.

Straight tequila with no mixer was not her drink of choice. After almost gagging on the first sip, she managed the next four with only a grimace and a pinch to her face as she forced herself to swallow. It wasn't a night out with Foggy, stumbling from bar to bar until the fishermen's market opened, but it would have to do.

Sinking back onto the couch, she didn't move to turn the television back on. She didn't reach for her phone or her computer. All she could manage enough effort for was refilling her glass with tequila. Ignoring her own article that would publish in the morning, ignoring the lies and the truths that had been revealed to her, ignoring the betrayal and hurt she felt, she drank her drink without hesitation. By the time she filled it again, the numb feeling she was aiming to find finally hit her with blissful ease.

Two weeks passed. Three. Four. She had trouble keeping track when it hardly mattered. She picked news topics here and there and attempted articles. Once in a while, one would stick. In those cases, she threw herself completely into the story. Getting lost in that portion of reality allowed her to forget the remainder completely. When she was working on a story, she could ignore the truth about Daredevil's identity. And the fact that Foggy, apparently, had known for quite some time and yet had failed to mention it to her.

It all made sense, of course. Matt had never seemed like the alcoholic type. It was a much better explanation for all the missed meetings, all the injuries so thinly concealed. But it didn't explain Karen's reluctance to believe him. It was the truth. Of course it was the truth. But when she sat down and thought about it, really pondered it, she realized she didn't want it to be true. Just as she wanted to distort realty and go back to that night of the car crash and the small cabin in the woods.

She was able to avoid the news of the Daredevil and the Punisher by writing news of her own. She was too self-conscious in her newly discovered apparent talent for journalism to ever read anything she wrote, and it was as good an excuse as any to completely avoid the news outlets in general. After telling Matt she needed space and time to think, she was able to shut out the entire vigilante related portion of her life.

It lasted for a few more weeks. A few weeks of self-indulged oblivion. Then she found herself home alone one night with a knocking on her door. She flinched at the sound, never expecting visitors. She hesitated at the side table, toying with the gun sitting innocently on the surface. She didn't need it, she tried to convince herself. So she unlocked the deadbolt she'd recently installed and swung the door open wide.

She didn't know what she'd expected. Perhaps Matt, perhaps Foggy. One of her only two friends in Hell's Kitchen, dropping by to check in since Nelson and Murdock was officially a thing of the past. Instead, she found Frank. Dressed normally in blue jeans, a black shirt, and his black jacket, she almost overlooked the bruises and cuts that littered his face.

As she deliberated the decision to slam the door in his face, she lost her slim margin of opportunity. His hand shot forward and gripped the edge of the door. "Don't worry," he said by way of greeting, "I'm not going to hurt you."

She laughed at that. Could do nothing but laugh. She'd been hurt beyond repair the past two months. Her life had fallen apart piece by piece, slowly but just fast enough that she couldn't stop the rise of the fall. She was being punished now for something, surely, though she failed to come up with a viable reason as she stared off into nothingness most nights.

Her naivety, she usually decided. She'd moved to New York City to be a part of something bigger than herself. She'd wanted to escape the small town life she'd suffered through for a couple of decades. She had wanted to surround herself with people and culture and life.

Instead, she'd ended up in a world of death and deceit and vigilante justice. Because she'd been foolish and naïve, believing the big city would offer her a better life. Worst of all, she'd filled her life with hurt, doled out in large servings from the few people she'd managed to open up to and get close to.

"You can't be here," she told him. There was a bitterness to her words, a bite in her tone. She was still so angry with his decisions. She'd defended him to the people who thought the worst, and he'd gone out and proved them right. He'd made her look a fool. Even worse, he made her feel the fool.

"I need to explain," he said.

She thought back to Matt. To the mask hidden in the nondescript brown bag folded over. She thought about that talk and how it'd ripped and torn at the seams of her soul and heart. She was done with explanations. She'd purge herself of it, of all of it, of all of them, if she had to. Anything to get back to a semblance of a normal life in this hell on Earth. "I don't care," she said. In vain, she tried to push the door shut. It didn't budge, and she hadn't expected it to, but it made her intentions clear. "You can go," she added pointedly.

"I don't remember them as well anymore. I went back to the house. I sat at the table. The dishes were still there, not in the sink. I ran my fingers across the keys of the piano. I stood in my house, and I felt like the ghost. Nothing else was there. It was empty. They were gone. It felt wrong. It all felt wrong. But not it gets harder and harder to see them in my memory."

Biting her bottom lip, she leaned against the door for support. She didn't want to care. She wanted to take pleasure in the fact that he was suffering from his decisions as well. But her heart couldn't muster the emotion. At least not the negative kind she aimed for. She thought about telling him everything she felt. She felt like screaming and punching and clawing at the already marred face. It wouldn't do any good, and she knew it. It would be a waste of energy she no longer had.

"You set your house on fire." She still couldn't believe it. She'd seen in on the news, had read it in her own newspaper. Even in the face of all the evidence, she thought it must have been a part of the cover up. She fought so hard to believe that he hadn't lost that last link to his humanity. She wanted so desperately to believe.

"There wasn't another left for me there," he said, as if it were any kind of explanation.

"Right." She nodded her head, but she didn't believe it. Didn't agree at all. Her head felt heavy, but she managed to lift it to peer up at him. "Why are you here?" It was difficult to discern which one of them had darker shadows under their eyes. Who could sleep anymore?

It was his turn to be at a loss for word. She was glad she wasn't the only one, but upset he'd felt the need to show up in the first place. She was fighting so hard to purge this dark side of her life, yet neither he nor Matt seemed capable of letting her. Each time she thought she was done, one of them pulled her back.

"You help me remember." He said it so softly she almost didn't catch the words. "I need to remember."

'Not anymore', she wanted to clarify. 'There is nothing I can say anymore'. It was only one of a thousand different sentences that came to mind. She bit down on her lip instead, so hard it drew blood this time. Her lip swelled in the spot where her teeth sank in, and she tasted the warmth. Then she imagined all the blood that Frank had spilled. All the blood that Matt had littered the streets with. It turned her stomach, but at the same time she thought about whose blood it was. "I think you're past remembering," she told him honestly. Softly, because she didn't want to believe the words. A part of her, however small, still hoped that he could find redemption. That he wasn't completely lost to his cause.

"I think I could, again. I think you could help me."

She wondered, then, what had happened to bring him to her doorstep so many weeks later. Some catalyst, something big, must have happened to drive him here. Was it whatever had happened while he was in the military? That something the colonel had eluded to by the cabin that no one had ever explained? She wasn't sure, and she wasn't even sure she wanted to know.

The door yearned to be shut. It needed to put space between the two of them and distance her from getting involved. She'd been far too involved already, and she'd paid the price. She'd put so much faith into him, and in the end he'd let her down. He showed no signs that this time would be any different. If anything, she had even less hope now. He'd burnt the bridge that connected him to his past and had nothing left to push for. She wasn't so naïve as to think he'd want to change for her. She was done being naïve.

Yet, she couldn't force herself to send him away. He'd saved her life, after all, more than once. Once in her very apartment. He'd shielded her from the people trying to frame him. He'd saved her again in the woods, even if he'd taken it too far. Even if it had ended in her walking away.

She pushed the door open wider, taking a step back to allow him in. She waited as he hesitated, and a large part of her hoped he would turn around and walk away. She'd been hurt enough, and she knew this acceptance of him back into her life would not lead down a decent path. Nothing but pain awaited her if she let him back into her life.

But she did it anyway. Perhaps Hell's Kitchen had made her a glutton for punishment.


End file.
